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Gaza City

I neglected to add one anecdote from my tour of the ruins of Police City on Tuesday night. One of the officers who walked with me most of the time, and proceeded to go on in Arabic as I just nodded and smiled, came across some papers lying in the rubble. He picked them out, slapped them with the back of his hand and went off ranting about something that I couldn’t understand. Read more about Missiles Fall Like Rain - March 8-12, 2002

The fears arose on Monday night. Through my contact Jose, I had been introduced to two other Americans working at different NGO’s here, Darryl and Nathan. Both had strong academic, dare I say nerdy backgrounds (they began talking about Voltron cartoons after not too long), yet it had enabled them to pick up Arabic in a relatively short time. They also had been here for much longer. Read more about Gaza - Bombing begins - March 4-7, 2002

So far Gaza life has been rather uneventful. The entry was still intimidating, as passing through the Erez Checkpoint is like entering a maximum security jail. I was a little shaken as I walked up to the Israeli guardpost, noticing at my feet one of the telltale ‘Sarajevo Roses’ - a shell hit that peels pavement in the shape of a flower. Read more about Life in Gaza, Week 1, Feb 28, 2002

Al-Jazeera TV footage showed the bodies of five Palestinian men executed when Israeli soldiers found out where they’d hidden in a building in Ramallah on Sunday. They had feared for their lives and apparently had good reason to do so. Four were shot with a single bullet to the head. One was murdered with sixteen bullets, mostly fired into his face and chest. Their weapons were confiscated. They lay on the floor, mostly face down. Dark streaks of dried blood covered the walls of their room. Clearly they’d been considered innocent until proven guilty by the great democracy of the Middle East. I wish this were the worst of the crimes now on film. Read more about Promises from Palestine